Trying to get students to participate in moodle discussion forums can drive you up the wall.

There are a variety of  techniques that you can use to encourage engagement in the forums but this post may provide an easier solution. There is an old saying (unfortunately I don’t know where it came from, “if you want to catch a fish, go where the fish are”. In this context I interpret that as if you want to get students talking to one another about your subject – go to where they talk. The most obvious place for todays students is through social media. This short video shows you how to embed a hashtag from twitter into your moodle page. So when they talk on twitter about your subject, using the hashtag that you provide, all of their comments on twitter are fed through into your moodle course

In this video you will see the twitter feed being placed as a HTML block on the side of the course. You can also insert the feed as a “label” in a section on the course – the choice is yours

Related articles

• What is Moodle? (enhancingteaching.com)
• Twitter in higher education (enhancingteaching.com)